


Adoptions & Alcohol

by LucyLovecraft



Category: Ogniem i Mieczem | With Fire and Sword (1999), Trylogia | The Trilogy - Henryk Sienkiewicz
Genre: Backstory, Canon Related, Comedy, Flirting, Gen, Heavy Drinking, I Don't Even Know, Implied Possibility of Future Potentialities, M/M, Why Did I Write This?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-19
Updated: 2018-11-19
Packaged: 2019-08-25 19:10:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16666579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LucyLovecraft/pseuds/LucyLovecraft
Summary: “…Bohun, their little prince, their heart of hearts, who’s become my bosom friend since the day I drank him under the table and promised to adopt him.”Zagłoba sometimes makes good life choices. Offering to adopt Jurko Bohun was certainly not one of these. But he's always had a weakness for pretty people, hasn't he?This is a lot of vaguely comedic Bohun/Zagłoba fake-y flirting, and I apologise for even making you have to think about this. It's sparklingdali's fault. Please let me emphasise how much Bohun and Zagłobado nothave sex. Even I have to sleep at night. But Bohun is totally flirting to get what he wants, and Z. doesn't mind.





	Adoptions & Alcohol

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sparklingdali](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparklingdali/gifts).



The young Cossack drank alone. He had been drinking for quite some time, judging by the bottles.

Though he sat with his back to Zagłoba, the old trickster read all he needed to know from the scene before him. His practised eye noted the rich (if tar-smeared) finery the man wore. He took in the way the serving maids had nearly come to blows over who would bring the next bottle of wine. Yet from the way even the proprietor forced his sour face into a servile smile, Zagłoba knew it was surely not only for the man’s company that the maids fought.

 _Well,_ he said to himself, _it is good for young men to hear the wisdom of their betters. And if God had meant men to drink alone, wine would not make men loquacious._

Zagłoba drained the last drop from the bottle before him and rose.

“Greetings to you, my fine Cossack hero!” he hailed.

The man turned in his chair. Dark as it was in the tavern, he remained shrouded in gloom: a suggestion of broad shoulders and the dull glint of gems on a sheathed dagger.

“Yes, you! Who else could I be speaking to?” Beaming upon the stranger like a vinous sunrise, Zagłoba advanced. “Who else looks so like a warrior of legend? Well, it does a man good to drink with fellows made of the same stuff! When two heroes drink together, it does honour to the establishment, be it ever so high or low!”

Perhaps a little drunk on the sound of his own voice (certainly not alcohol, at any rate), Zagłoba continued in a similar vein until he and his prospective drinking partner were barely a foot apart.

The young Cossack blinked blearily up at him, possibly too drunk to make much sense of anything. Or maybe he wasn’t that bright.

“What do you—” The Cossack paused, frowned, then leaned closer, peering up into Zagłoba’s face.

Zagłoba, for his part, knew a moment of unaccustomed speechlessness.

 _Nevermind his sword arm,_ he marvelled. _One flutter of those lashes and the Khan himself might hand the Crimea to him on a silver platter, and thank him for the privilege._

The fit of speechlessness did not last, however.

“Ha! And look at you: the very picture of a hero. Did you step out of a song, m’boy?” The bench creaked as he sat himself by the man's side. “Hey, you buy me a round, and I’ll tell you my exploits, then we’ll take turn and turn about! Now what’s your name?”

The handsome face darkened slightly.

“Bohun. I’m Bohun.”

“You’re the famous Jurko Bohun? The Cossack colonel? Young man, I’d begun to think you were a legend dreamt up by wandering singers, not a man of flesh and blood!”

“Ey, well...” Bohun said, then clearly rallied himself to string words together: “You’re too kind.”

For a man as visibly drunk as Bohun was, Zagłoba thought that an admirably eloquent demurral.

“Not at all! Why, your name resounds through all Ukraine! Had you been born a little earlier, you and I might have made an alliance such as would make the walls of Istanbul itself tremble! But alas, such was not to be.”

“You have been in the wars, _panie?”_

This Bohun fellow really was doing very well, given how many bottles he’d consumed.

“I am Jan Zagłoba; my family crest is ‘in-the-forehead’, as you can see by the scarred badge of courage I wear. No other star but Mars has ruled my life, though poor Venus sent her handmaidens to tempt me from my course. But there has never been any life for me but this!” He slapped his sabre, making the links that held it jangle. Drunk though Bohun was, even that faint sound made the Cossack’s nostrils flare like a hunting hound’s.

“Ha!” Zagłoba exclaimed, clapping him on the back. “I see you’re a real spitfire, just as legend says.”

“Where…” Bohun’s face had lost some of its surly suspicion, but a certain wariness lingered—very sensibly, Zagłoba thought, given that the young man probably could not focus his eyes. “Where have you fought?”

“Now there’s a long list! It’d be thirsty work, too, to count every battle and every vanquished foe. Here, let’s have a drink to your fame first!”

Bohun watched in blurry incomprehension as other man poured them both brimming glasses (where had the other glasses come from? Bohun never knew). Zagłoba raised his in salute. With a heroic effort that endeared the young man to Zagłoba extremely, the Cossack managed to throw his arm around Zagłoba’s shoulder and clashed their glasses together.

“Hey, my young Cossack hero, how do you—”

“And would the gentlemen like another bottle?”

Both Zagłoba and Bohun looked up to see a young man standing above them. Golden curls glowed above green eyes like forest pools, set in a complexion as clear and lovely as a maiden’s.

_I really must come here more often. What a charming establishment._

Zagłoba’s gaze flicked to the counter, wondering at the suspicious absence of the two competing barmaids. Perhaps they had killed each other in a frenzy of avarice and concupiscence, and this young man was their replacement. Yet both were apparently very much alive. Indeed, they were glaring at the golden interloper like a pair of angry cats.

The old nobleman’s eye returned to the young man of the house, who really was a most charming sight.

 _Almost as beautiful as_ —

Thought and glance returned to Bohun in the same instant.

There was no denying it. A few hours ago, Zagłoba might have called the golden creature an angel, and meant it too. But now, in comparison to the darkly handsome pagan idol beside him on the bench, the merely pretty stranger only served to underscore how utterly breathtaking Bohun was.

And beauty was not the only thing Zagłoba saw in the Cossack’s face.

Close as they were, there was no mistaking the look in Bohun’s eyes. Zagłoba knew it well. What discretion the Cossack possessed had long since been drowned in drink, but hunger remained. And Bohun’s expression as he looked at the young man was sharp with the anguish of starvation.

Bohun had been lovely in repose, but suffering lent his face the sublime beauty of a painted martyr’s: rapture and torment blended.

Unhappiness suited him.

Zagłoba could not tell if what he felt then for the young man was fondness or pity.

“Hey,” Zagłoba said, giving the Cossack’s shoulder a shake.

The wild, lonely blue-green eyes turned to him, impossibly lovely.

“We’ll share a bottle or two, what do you say?”

 

* * *

 

Later, there were stories: a promised princess, a hopeless love, and the glory of battle. The words poured out like a song, but Zagłoba learned far, far more from what was not said. Perhaps others might have been fooled, but not Jan Onufry Zagłoba. Bohun's deepest truths were written between the lines of the legend he told of himself.

If he was honest with himself (an infrequent habit), Zagłoba knew the same might have been said of him.

Later, Zagłoba wondered if that was why he made his offer.

The words came out with practised ease: he’d said them to others before now. But as soon as he’d uttered them, it dawned on Onufry Zagłoba that those words should not have been said. Not to this man.

Every man had his weakness. It was the perfect thing to offer Bohun to win him over entirely; even on brief acquaintance, that had been obvious. But this could never be offered without being delivered upon. Not if one wished to live.

The words struck Bohun like a thunderbolt. The fire in the Cossack’s blood blazed to life, searing away the wine. He turned flame-heart blue eyes on Zagłoba, with no haze of drink to obscure them.

No sight could have sobered Zagłoba faster.

“Yes!” Bohun cried. “If you are in earnest, I’ll never give you cause to regret it! I give you my word that I will be as devoted a son as any in Christendom! Say you will do this, dear sir!”

Either Zagłoba could answer “yes” or the young man would kill him for dangling what he so dreamed of before him only to snatch it away.

The correct thing to say, therefore, was: “Of course I will! Your fame would bring honour to my illustrious lineage, once I’ve taught you a few things. You’ve the raw stuff of a Zagłoba, my young friend!”

Bohun had not heard a word of his bluster. He only knew that all his hopes and dreams had been offered to him in one transcendent moment. All he’d claimed, all he’d carved out for himself from the unforgiving world with his sabre—all of that was as nothing compared to this one chance.

Had this moment been a battle, Bohun would have claimed it and stood his ground against all comers. He would have made a mountain of corpses before he relinquished a single inch. This would be _his_.

Yet how to make it so now?

Gold had bought Zagłoba’s favour so far. Drunk as he was, Bohun had no illusions about that. Bohun had only one other coin to offer. It might conceivably cost him to spend it, but what he bought would be cheap at the price.

His arm was draped across Zagłoba’s back: he pulled him closer.

“You’ll truly be that good of a friend to me?” he asked. His thumb stroked in slow circles on Zagłoba’s shoulder. “Then I’ll have to find some way to be as good a friend to you, won’t I?”

“Hmm, is that so?” Zagłoba’s good eye flashed, eyebrows rising. Jurko Bohun might have fine manners and a certain lordly air, but subtlety was as beyond his grasp as the stars themselves. This was not subtle. But it was interesting, whatever it was. A fascinating possibility. Utterly suicidal. Certainly impossible. And yet...

A voice within spoke. It spoke much, much louder than it ever could have hoped to at any other time. Common sense would have smothered it. Cowardice would have conquered it. Had not Bohun’s beautiful face been mere inches from his own, Zagłoba would hardly have heard it at all. But now it spoke, drowning out common sense and cowardice both:

 _Look at those eyes,_ it said.

Zagłoba shifted as he sat. Leaning forwards to pluck up another bottle from the table, he let his arm slip from around Bohun’s shoulders and—ever-so-casually—to his waist.

Bohun made no sign that he did not welcome this advance. Yet he certainly showed no very profound stirring of ardour, however. There was nothing of the courtesan's pretty sham: no lowered lashes, no heaving breast. Bohun was not, it seemed, burning with unrestrained carnal desire for Zagłoba’s person. But then, Bohun would have had to be very sly indeed to convince Zagłoba of _that_.

The offer was clear. It was a coarse, crude little offer, but Zagłoba couldn’t say he was indifferent—or at least he could not have said so with any truth.

“It seems to me you’d find ways of expressing your gratitude. It’s a fine thing, gratitude,” Zagłoba said.

“And so I should be. I would feel very grateful.”

 _“‘Would_ feel’?” Zagłoba had in no way missed the emphasis.

“I can’t feel gratitude for something not yet given.”

“Now that simply lacks logic! How can you not feel gratitude in this very moment? How could you not feel it, thinking of the honour I am about to bestow? Of the privilege, of the title, of the prestige? And will you not reap the benefits of my generosity the moment you tell your beloved princess? Will her dark eyes not shine even to hear that such glories lie in your future? No, no: you would be ennobled even by the first rumours of the honour I’m going to bestow on you.” He patted Bohun’s hand. “The first and truest sign of nobility is a feeling of humble gratitude, you know. Ingratitude marks a man as a commoner, for ingratitude is as common as dirt.”

“Ey, how could I know such things? I’m still just a simple Cossack, _panie_ ,” Bohun smiled with all his teeth. _Glorious._

 _“_ That’s not quite true, my lad.” _And therein lies the problem,_ he added to himself.

Bohun leaned towards him, the full length of his slim, strong body pressed against Zagłoba’s.

“How am I to feel such things now,” he murmured, moustache brushing Zagłoba’s ear, “when you say there is so great a difference between being common and noble?”

There was an answer to that. A good one. A convincing one, sparkling with a rapier wit that the Cossack’s clumsy attempts could not have countered. Onufry Zagłoba was not one to be manipulated. His brain had never failed him, certainly not in a tight situation. When the heart began to race, it sped the wings of wit.

This was not _quite_ the same thing, however. The heart raced for many reasons.

It had been a long time since anyone quite so breathtaking had their thigh pressed against his own in that unmistakably deliberate way. If Zagłoba’s hand remembered how to fit against the curve of a supple waist, memory could not recall the last time it had done so. Not like this.

“When will the thing be done?” Bohun asked, tilting his head.

Ah, but that did pose many and varied challenges.

“These things can’t be rushed,” Zagłoba said.

Bohun sat back. His eyes glittered. Zagłoba felt a chill that had nothing to do with the absence of Bohun’s body against his own.

“Ey, I suppose not,” Bohun sighed. “I await your pleasure, _panie_.”

Spoken from lips like those, it should have been alluring. But there were sharp teeth in that lovely mouth.

“If you want to play games, my lad, you’d best be careful. I may not be as young as I used to be, but that means I’m a cunning old fox that young hounds like you ought to be wary of.”

“Who said I’m playing games?” Bohun asked. He’d been toying with the collar of Zagłoba’s shirt, but suddenly Zagłoba did not like the man’s hand so near to his throat. “I’m not playing games, _panie_. Are you?”

“Absolutely not! Banish the thought from your head! I’m in deadly earnest, as I should hope you are. We must begin in good faith, as good friends always do.”

“And we are already such good friends! Why else would you be so fond of me that you spend all your time with a poor Cossack?”

Zagłoba coughed, deliberately _not_ looking at the legion of empty bottles on the table.

“Give me your word, then, won’t you?” Bohun brushed the hair back from Zagłoba’s brow with a solicitous hand. “Give me your word, like a good friend.”

“And what would you give me to seal the oath?”

“Why, my own word as a Cossack. But I see you have some doubts. Let me allay them.”

Never in all his life could Zagłoba ever believed that a kiss could be both seduction and threat. But Bohun’s was all that and more: a kiss that burned like liquor, heady as wine.

“Why then,” Zagłoba said hoarsely. “I give you my word.”

“Good.” Bohun patted the breast of Zagłoba’s kontusz, grinning like a young wolf. “And as for me, I’ll carry your promise in my heart like a treasure. No matter where we two may go, I’ll always find you. Nothing could keep me from you, dear as you are to me.”

Zagłoba swiftly considered his options. None were good. But there was nothing else to be done, not here, not now.

So, having nothing to lose, he kissed the Cossack full on the lips.

Bohun froze. Even as Zagłoba turned (with the greatest sangfroid) back to the bottle, the Cossack seemed so utterly amazed by the unbelievable recklessness of what Zagłoba had done that he could only stare. 

Then, slowly, he began to smile.

“Ey, Pan Zagłoba,” he said, a feral delight shining in his eyes. “Maybe I should be wary of you, old fox. Maybe you’d make a good Cossack, did you ever think of that?”

Reaching out, he twirled one end of Zagłoba’s moustache.

“Not me,” Zagłoba said. “In my old age I’m a man of peace. I’ll leave the danger to younger, more foolish heads.”

“You clearly have some taste for danger.”

Zagłoba glanced at him sharply. But the young Cossack apparently had been entirely oblivious to his own double entendre.

“Ah,” Zagłoba said, shaking his head, “I thirst for it as I do wine. But with age, one learns to indulge in moderation. You should learn from my example.”

“I’m sure I will.”

“Well, there is no time like the present! Another toast— another round! Drink up, that we may christen this agreement between us.”

Bohun emptied his glass, grinning as he wiped wine from his lips with his sleeve.

_And if I live to kiss those full lips again I’ll be richer in miracles than a saint. He won’t let me go, not even if I ran to the furthest corners of the earth._

He cast an appraising eye over Bohun. Joy was burning in the young Cossack now. Bottle after bottle he drank, and the wine might have been water for all it affected the rapture in his face. He was, however, swaying to an alarming degree, and was drinking directly from the bottle with great enthusiasm.

Yet why run, though? Why run, until he had to? The pact was made, but Bohun did not, in fact need the agreement formalised this very moment. As Zagłoba had said: the rumour of his adoption would be gift enough, at least in the short term.

If Zagłoba had already made something of a devil’s bargain (and with a handsome devil, too), it was no great hardship to linger in Bohun’s company. Zagłoba searched his heart, seeking the cause of the curious feeling in his breast. It was not merely the fondnesses or lusts of inebriation. He was intimately familiar wine, and wine was not the cause of what he felt when he looked at Jurko Bohun. There was something about him. A latent promise of danger, perhaps. And, beneath the lies Bohun wove about himself, a truth so awful and raw that the old liar found himself fascinated. The young Cossack was magnetic, his beauty the blazing brightness of a burning fuse—who could tear their eyes away, even if they dared?

Zagłoba did, in fact, continue to watch Bohun as he drank, round after round. If Bohun had been drunk on mere elation before, alcohol was now steadily gaining ground.

“To your health,” Bohun slurred, throwing one arm around Zagłoba’s shoulders and beaming at him with great sastisfaction.

“And to yours,” Zagłoba replied, and watched as Bohun shut his eyes, leaned his head against Zagłoba’s chest, and then slid gently under the table.

 _Ah,_ Zagłoba thought to himself, hearing the soft sounds of snoring from under the bench, _if he doesn’t kill me, this Jurko Bohun will be the death of me._

He was, as was often the case, not entirely correct.


End file.
